I was targeting my next update on the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly for about April 15, but within the last couple of days there have been two interesting developments worth mentioning.

The first is that the workers on the back side of PC-biz, the GA business web site, are now assigning action items to committees.  But in the on-line system there is an up-side and a down-side to this.  The positive is that we now see which committees will be dealing with what business, barring changes by Committee 2 – Bills and Overtures.  In particular, the “man behind the curtain” has been moving several items over to Committee 3 – General Assembly Procedures, and Committee 4 – Church Polity.  The problem is that in the assignment, while the back-end ID number seems to remain the same, the more user-friendly overture number or recommendation number gets removed and replaced with a committee item number.  For instance, Overture 86 on creating the Truckee Lutheran Presbyterian Church is now Committee item 04-10.  If you do the digging to look at the sponsor, it is then clear it came from a Presbytery, therefore it must be an Overture.  But there appears to be no reference kept to its overture number. C’est la vie

The second item of news is that Moderator candidate Bruce Reyes-Chow has announced that his Vice-moderator nominee is Dr. Rev. Bryon Wade.  Rev. Wade is the pastor of Davie Street Memorial Church (CitySearch calls it Davie Street Presbyterian Church as does the Presbytery congregations page) in Raleigh, NC, New Hope Presbytery.  While Bryon does not appear to match Bruce in “on-line presence,” (I’m now sure how many of us could) Bruce does list a Facebook page for him.  Rev. Wade is originally from Los Angeles and has served the denomination in a number of positions, including service on General Assembly Council.  Bruce comments that they have been friends for a couple of decades and share not only a history with the denomination but similar visions for it.

We can expect more Vice-Moderator information coming from the other candidates in the next few weeks.  At the latest, the Vice-Moderator nominees and the official bio and statements book will be out no later than May 7, the 45 day deadline before GA begins.

A few other developments:

Over on Presbyblog Bob Davies has his comments on many of the issues faced by General Assembly this year.  And Rev. Davies is taking these item by item so there is significent detail on several of them.  With so many significant pieces of business coming up we will see how many he gets through before GA begins.  However, one of the items he has commented on is the proposed General Assembly Council Mission Work Plan, currently knows as Recommendation 31.  Another fellow blogger, Michael Kruse, is on the GAC and is one of the authors of that work plan and has some comments on Bob’s discussion.

Finally, the PC(USA) General Assembly site has posted a Prayer for the General Assembly from the Book of Common Prayer on the GA Worship page.  Usually a couple of other organizations prepare prayer guides leading up to GA so we will keep watching for those.

Things continue to move forward towards the 218^th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).  There has been little “news” but enough changes since my last update that I think it is time for another one.

First some “fluff” items:
The General Assembly web site has changed it’s “look and feel” so it is now unique in the PC(USA) domain.  It no longer fits the standard design you see on most other pages but has its own style with the navigation bar across the top, a wider area for content, and a gray “motif” with less contrast than the main pages.  I don’t see a change in the content though.  One thing that is gone is the prominent link to the Committee on Local Arrangements (COLA) and the COLA web site still has a style based on the PC(USA) main page.

The second item is that my son finally got registered on-line for the assembly.  The process was slow and threw back server errors a couple of times, but worked in the end.

Finally, there is now a detailed schedule of events posted for the GA, 26 pages worth, listing not just the business sessions and worship, but all the special meals you can buy tickets for and the speakers or awards at those meals.  My son looked at that and asked “but what would I be interested in?”  I pointed him to a couple that are up his alley.   I’ll return to a couple of interesting items on the schedule at the end of this post.

Over the last couple of weeks the number of overtures has only grown slightly, but the number of recommendations listed on PC-biz has started explode.

For the overtures, there are six new ones, bringing the total to 86.  Of these, there is one more about the FOG report (Overture 81)  from the Presbytery of Western North Carolina to receive the report, have officers and Governing Bodies study it, get back to the Stated Clerk by Jan. 1, 2010, and refer the business to the 219^th GA in 2010.  Overture 86 is fairly routine business to establish Truckee Lutheran Presbyterian Church as a union church in Truckee, Nevada.  There is also a social witness overture, 82, from Twin Cities Area Presbytery, challenging the denomination to work for shalom in the world.  The overture singles out no specific geographic area or particular conflict, but does oppose the doctrine of preemptive war as well as torture while supporting the promotion of human rights.

The other three overtures are more unique, have some nuance, and have interesting implications for Presbyterian politics.

The first is Overture 83, “On Equal Rights for Families of Same-Gender Partners” from New Brunswick Presbytery.  This overture touches both sides of the PC(USA)’s seemingly paradoxical stand on same-sex relationships.  As the rational of the overture points out, the PC(USA) has a history of social witness promotion of the civil rights of same-sex couples.  At the same time the denomination has been embroiled in the controversy over the ban on the ordination of active homosexuals and on same-sex unions.  Some, on both sides, see these opposite stands as contradictory while many in the center do understand the differing social and polity stands to be perfectly compatible with our Reformed theology.  This overture is interesting because it touches both parts and blurs the difference.  Point 1 is pretty clear on renewing the commitment to civil rights.  But Point 2 asks for a special committee to report to the next GA on the relationship between our two positions.  Specifically it asks for a report on:

a.The history of the laws governing marriage and civil union, including current policy debates.
b. How the theology and practice of marriage have developed in the Reformed and broader Christian tradition.
c. The relationship between civil marriage and Christian marriage.
d. The effects of current laws on same-gender partners and their children.
e. The place of covenanted same-gender partnerships in the Christian community.

The final point in the overture is to support congregations as they “extend pastoral care to same-gender couples and their families.”

Overture 84 is a request from the Flint River Presbytery to change the standing rules so that amending the standing rules or suspending the standing rules only requires a majority vote rather than a super-majority of 2/3.  We will see how far this gets because one of our subordinate standards (just kidding!) is Robert’s Rules of Order which has a 2/3 vote to suspend the rules.  All that the overture rational says is that the current 2/3 imposes an “unrealistic constraint.” I have seen the GA amend and suspend the rules several times so it can be done for good reason.  Somebody who wants to look for “conspiracy theories” might find something in this change.  I’ll have to reread the minutes from the last GA to see what business was related to a failed suspension of the standing rules.

Finally, overture 85 proposes a change in the investment restrictions on General Assembly Council (GAC) allowing them to invest with organizations other than the Presbyterian Foundation.  The rational is that the GAC is the only PC(USA) entity required to use the Foundation exclusively and it points out that the Board of Pensions has done better elsewhere.  This overture was brought by the Synod of the Southwest.

As I mentioned above, the number of recommendations to the Assembly is growing, currently up to 26 beginning with the Report of the Form of Government Task Force as Recommendation 1.  In this post I’m not going to do a item-by-item analysis of the recommendations.  Some are routine approvals of a new seminary president (7), seminary trustees (6), Historical Society and Mountain Retreat Association Board members (20 and 26).  Some are the official wording or the items from the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy that I discussed in February.  Many of the remaining are recommendations from the General Assembly Council.  Let me highlight a couple:

Recommendation 19 is unique, so far, in that it is the only recommendation with proposed changes to the Book of Order.  This is unusual to come from an agency, but this is the result of the referral to the GAC of an overture to the 217^th GA in 2006 to create a non-geographic Korean language sy
nod.  Following a consultation in December 2006 the GAC is recommending that a non-geographic synod not be authorized, but is suggesting changes to the Book of Order that would allow a church in a synod without a non-geographic language presbytery be able to join a non-geographic presbytery in another synod.  This does have interesting polity implications since Overture 10 is asking for a general flexibility in presbytery and synod membership.

Another document suggested for change is the Open Meeting Policy in recommendation 18.  This is more of a change for clarification saying that observers may not only attend, but have copies of the documents, and that cases under the Rules of Discipline also fall under the category of closed meetings.

There have been some new items among groups affiliated with the PC(USA) related to GA.  On the schedule I mentioned earlier, you will find that on any given day you can have a briefing by Presbyterians for Renewal at lunch time.

Also at every lunch break will be “Something Happening for Love Justice and Jesus” by That All May Freely Serve (TAMFS).  The description is:

Come out to celebrate the ALL of the Church’s future. Music? Art? Theater? Something Else? Watch for signs, check www.tamfs.org for where to gather for these daily events.

This appears to be linked to their advocacy at GA this year titled “New Church (R)evolution!”  Their web site describes it as:

Young adults and seminarians – our New Church (R)evolution team – will
claim their birthright as members of a just and inclusive church.
Through positive, life-giving action, the New Church (R)evolution will be the church we seek, as we invite the PCUSA to have the courage to join us in living into freedom and justice! [emphasis in the original]

With the mention of “young adults,” and the descriptions on the associated brochure, the target audience is clearly the same as has been the concern in the various discussions of Web 2.0 and the future of the church.  As the brochure says in one box, “Studies consistently show that people under 35 have heard the gospel message and support the inclusion of all believers, LGBTQ or otherwise. So while some people continue to use tactics to ensure exclusion, the next generation has already decided for the full equality of all people.”

Clearly TAMFS has a strategy for connecting with the younger generation in ways familiar to that culture.  It will be interesting to see if it does connect, if there are enough younger generation present to connect with, and if any conservative/evangelical leaning groups will have a similar presence.

This will be interesting so stay tuned for GA.

As the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) gets closer the overture process is winding down, but lots of other things are winding up.

On the official web pages, my observation in my last post was correct and the GA Business page has been generalized, the overtures removed, and all information shifted over to PC-biz.  Also, the two previously unlisted overtures, 62 and 68 have appeared in the list now.

One can understand why overture 68 was being worked on for so long.  Foothills Presbytery has put together an extensive overture, both in recommendation and rational, that does some major word-smithing of the Form of Government Task Force (FOG) proposed text for the new Foundations of Presbyterian Polity and Form of Government sections of the Book of Order.  I should note right up front that the task force might have rearranged the first four chapters into three new chapters of Foundations, but this overture rewrites a lot of text in both sections to change the theological focus.  The overture runs almost 16,000 words in length and if pasted into a word processor comes to 38 pages.  Just some more light reading for the commissioners.

To quote the overture the intent of this theological redirection is:

1. Ensure that any revised Form of Government (and Foundations) approved by the General Assembly shall give pre-eminence to the Reformation marks of the true Church, with due consideration of their inner dynamics.

2. Ensure that any revised Form of Government (and Foundations) approved by the General Assembly shall give preference to the church participating in the mission of the triune God in contrast to the church as the delegated/ instrumental bearer (or provisional
demonstration) of God’s mission to the world.

To put it another way, from the Rational, “the marks of the true Church are participatory—where Christ is, there is the Church (ubi christus, ibi ecclesia). The marks are not instrumentalist—where the church is, there is Christ (ubi ecclesia, ibi christus).”  So this is about making the constitutional language reflect the initiative of God and that the church participates in the mission of God.  Much of the language in the General Rational section of this overture closely parallels the Missional Polity document the task force worked with and this overture appears to be proposing changes to the FOG that would more closely align the two in theological perspective.

As I read through the proposed language I find no changes in church operations, although the argument can be made that the FOG Task Force has removed operations from the new Form of Government anyway.  In some cases the word-smithing does not really change any language but places things into more readable forms, like creating bulleted lists, or splitting items in a list into more exclusive bullet points.  But there are a lot of changes in language placing new emphasis on the Triune God and the mission of God (missio Dei).  Some of the changes are linguistically subtle.  Some of these strike me as just some “clean-up” editing.  For example (added text in italics)

G-1.02 A congregation in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) can be organized and dissolved only by the authority of a presbytery and shall function under the provisions of this Constitution.

Some, while subtle word-wise, are theologically more important.  An example of this:  A line in G-1.0301 would change from

One becomes a member of the church through faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and acceptance of Christ’s Lordship in all of life.

to

Believing that Jesus Christ is Savior and Lord over all of life makes one a member of the church.

This is a good example of one consistent change in the overture where the language of “faith” in Jesus Christ seems to be uniformly replaced with “believing.”  Change like this are intended to place a greater emphasis on participating, as opposed to call and response.

As I read through this overture it strikes me that this seems to be somebody or some group’s idea of what the task force report should be if it is to be truly missional.  Looking at the members of the task force there is no one from Foothills so it did not come directly from a member who wanted to see more.  The overture is so complete and so extensive there has to be a “rest of the story” on this one.  It would be interesting to know how long the presbytery commissioners wrestled with this overture since it is so extensive.  And being this extensive, it will give the commissioners on the GA Form of Government Revision Committee even more to do.  I look forward to listening to, and maybe talking with, the GA overture advocate for this one.

Well, what else is new?  Maybe the most high-profile of the remaining overtures is 80 from Peace River Presbytery which complains about the Evangelical Presbyterian Church “actively pursuing a strategy to persuade Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) churches to disaffiliate.”  One interesting twist on this overture is that it asks for an investigation by the Executive Office of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) into the EPC’s actions.   Remember that the current president of WARC and presumably the head of the Executive Committee is the Rev. Dr. Clifton Kirkpatrick.  (Have I heard that name before?)  If it were to go to WARC he would obviously recuse himself from any investigation.  A similar overture that complained about the EPC was proposed, but not approved, by Mississippi Presbytery.

The remaining overtures are directed at social witness policy, or closely related topics.  Some that impact PC(USA) entities: 76 on Directing GAC to produce Adolescent Human Development Resources since the 217th General Assembly discontinued the human sexuality resources; 78 on Directing PDA (Presbyterian Disaster Assistance) to continue nurturing relationships with presbyteries affected by the storms of 2005; 79 is another request to reinstate the Office for Environmental Justice, similar to overture 24; and finally 77 is a request that this GA celebrate “Living Waters for the World.”  The remaining new overtures are 73 – “On the use of non-disposable food service items,” 74 – On addressing the violence and suffering inflicted on Iraqi women…, and 75 – On temporary suspension of military aid to the State of Israel.

That does it for the major new business that I have seen published.  I would note that there will be a meet and greet with all four Moderator candidates at the Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceville, NJ, on April 25.  And the Witherspoon Society has gotten their GA web site started.

From an “official” point of view it has been a fairly quiet couple of weeks since my last post looking forward to the upcoming 218^th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church(USA) (PC(USA)) in June.  We have had some personal business as I arranged for a hotel room for myself and we had to get release forms notarized for my son, who will be a YAD.  But on the PC(USA) web site there have been only a couple of items come up, and no new Moderator candidate endorsements or new overtures posted.  So, let’s get started…

First, shortly after that last post I found that Moderator candidate Carl Mazza has started a blog that he appears to update weekly, usually it seems in the early hours of Saturday morning, with moving stories about individuals and situations that he ministers to in his Meeting Ground ministry.

Second, I discovered that I was not drilling down quite far enough to properly follow the work of the Stated Clerk Nominating Committee.  So, now following their news page I find that they report having 14 applicants, all eligible for the position, and they are having phone interviews this month.

The last official item is the business sent to the GA by the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) from their meeting the last week of January.  This business is discussed in a news article from the Presbyterian News Service and will provide a lot of reading for the commissioners and delegates.

The ACSWP is sending two documents about Iraq to GA.  The resolution is titled “Costly lessons of the Iraq War” which includes a call for increased Christian-Muslim dialog as well as reducing anti-American pressure on Christian churches in majority-Muslim countries.  The study paper sounds like it is further reaching (I have found none of these documents on-line yet) covering “developing a plan to continue responding to concerns of Iranian and Iraqi churches during and after the war; providing ethical reflection and guidance to the PC(USA); and steps for education, advocacy and relationship building for members, congregations, soldiers, chaplains, governing bodies and the denomination’s United Nations and Washington
offices.”

The second topic was homelessness and a resolution titled “From Homelessness to Hope: Constructing Just, Sustainable Communities For All God’s People” was sent to GA.  This resolution is said to affirm those congregations and other entities involved in working with the homeless and calls on the church to be involved in a more comprehensive approach to ending homelessness.  It also asks the denomination to use investment money to work with the Local Initiatives Support Corporation to create a revolving loan fund.

Another resolution recognizes those that have contributed to clean-up and rebuilding efforts following Hurricane Katrina and calls for continued rebuilding work, to not abandon segments of society, and for better coastal public policy.  There is also a resolution on Voter Rights and Electoral Reform that, among other things, calls for the reauthorization of the voting rights act of 1965 and the standardization of voting across the country.  And there is a resolution calling for improved Human Rights in Columbia.

There is also a resolution on Energy Policy, that builds on the last policy statement from 1981.  This statement was ordered by the 214th General Assembly (2002).  The resolution calls for alternative fuels, conservation, sustainable agriculture, and for Presbyterian families, congregations and governing bodies to be “carbon neutral.”  A moratorium on coal and nuclear power plants is also called for.  I note the trade-off here since nuclear power plants are one path to carbon neutrality.  And expect more on carbon neutral policy in the future since the ACSWP web page has a page on Carbon Neutrality with a link to a working paper that was requested by the 217th General Assembly (2006).  That will probably come back in 2010.

Another issue that GA has looked at before is serious mental illness and ACSWP will bring to this GA a resolution that came out of their study requested by the 211th General Assembly (1999).  The resolution addresses justice-related issues and calls for full inclusion of the seriously mentally ill in the church and in society without having a stigma attached.

The resolution that probably hits closest to home is one on pay equity titled “God’s Work in Women’s Hands: Pay Equity and Just Compensation.”  In addition to society in general, the report looks at compensation within the PC(USA) and the differential between men and women in the same position.  It makes recommendations for congregations and bodies to examine and reform this.

The final ACSWP item is a new “ Social Creed for the 21st Century” that marks the centenary and updates the 1908 “ Social Creed for the Churches.”  This is an ecumenical document that will involve the National Council of Churches.  The news article says that the United Methodist Church is working on a version for “singing,” which should be interesting, unless that is a typo and they mean “signing.”  (Spell checkers don’t always help you).

This meeting of ACSWP was covered by James D. Berkley on behalf of the Institute on Religion and Democracy.  His article on the GA business is titled “ Commentary: ACSWP swamps General Assembly with papers.”  I must agree with him that the shear volume of material for commissioners to work through will be daunting.  We will have to see how it gets divided between committees.  But he talks about the volume being too large for ACSWP itself and how many of these papers were still in various stages of preparation.  In what condition will they make the February 22 business deadline?  In his commentary you can read Mr. Berkley’s comments on all this business from ACSWP I just outlined.

There are two other items that are floating around that I will mention, even though they have not made the official overture list yet.

It is reported that Pittsburgh Presbytery has passed an overture calling for a new translation of the Heidelberg Catechism.  The news is covered on, among other places, the More Light Presbyterians web site.  There have been concerns about the accuracy of the translation for a while.  As an elder commissioner to the 209th General Assembly (1997) I was lobbied to support a new translation.  For details on the perceived problems there is an article on the MPL web site about that as well.

The other overture that is “out there” is one calling for the reconsideration of the PC(USA) being in correspondence with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.  I discussed some of the reasons behind this last week, but the short version is that if the PC(USA) is not in correspondence with the EPC then churches can’t be dismissed to it and it would stem the flow of churches out of the PC(USA).  Well, according to Bill Crawford of Bayou Christian and his sources the overture failed in the Mississippi Presbytery meeting last night, but the news is circulating that other presbyteries may try to pass it.

Finally, the preparations are beginning for GA at the various affinity and special interest groups.  In particular, More Light Presbyterians and the Presbyterian Coalition have started building out their web sites with GA specific sections.  But at this point Presbyterians for Renewal has the most impressive preparations with a whole new site dedicated to GA at GA2008.com.

Well, we are approaching the February 22 Constitutional Business deadline so things will get busy in the next two weeks.  Stay tuned and let’s see what develops.

With the passing of the Christmas quiet period new items, news, and business related to the June General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will begin to get more plentiful.

First, while the Presbyterian News Service has released no news articles about additional moderator candidates, we know from the blogs that the Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow was endorsed by his presbytery, San Francisco Presbytery, at their meeting yesterday.  This will be an interesting Moderator campaingn to watch since, in my memory, this appears to be the first Web 2.0 Moderator campaign.  If you need an introduction to Web 2.0, you can look at the November 12, 2007, issue of the Presbyterian Outlook (free registration required) but it is the new technologies of interactive blogs and dynamic web sites.  If you want to see what Bruce is doing with it you can check out his new Moderator campaign web site/blog launched within minutes of the presbytery’s formal endosement.  And you can still find out about the non-moderator side of Bruce at his regular blog.

For us good old “frozen chosen” “we’ve never done it this way before” traditionalists it will be interesting what impact the new technology has not just on the Moderator election but on GA as a whole.  As a point of personal privilage I am delighted to announce that my son has been elected the YAD from our presbytery. (OK, proud Dad moment)  But in the next year I am hoping to use him as a lens to view the PC(USA) through much younger eyes.  And I do recognize that he is not a typical high school student.  After all, he wants to spend a week in San Jose doing Presbyterian Government.  But he is typical enough that he had more pressing issues to worry about until he was elected and only then were GA items worth his time.  And he did jump at Bruce’s web site when I showed it to him last night.  Whether Bruce and other candidates who have a Web 2.0 presence win or lose the Moderator vote, I think they will have an impact through their connection to a younger generation in the PC(USA).

Moving on to business before GA there is not much new here.  No new overtures have been posted to the GA Business web page in a while.  And Overture 3, the transfer of a church from a traditional to a Korean language presbytery has been withdrawn.  The next deadline is February 22 for the 120 day deadline for constitutional business.  And things will be quiet for a while longer in the Stated Clerk search.

I should also note that a couple of weeks ago the old and significantly outdated Office of General Assembly GA page that I commented on in my first GA Preview Post has disappeared and that link is now broken.  In fact, the whole set of pages for the Office of the General Assembly has been redone including a new general General Assembly page with basic information and the dates of the future Assemblies.  The 218th GA page is now easier to find and the COLA (Committee on Local Arrangements) web site is developing nicely.  However, it does take some doing to drill down to the web page for General Assembly Meeting Services with the information on registration and hotel reservations for the meeting.

Finally, a mention that all of the groups associated with the PC(USA) are starting to look ahead to the Assembly, but so far web pages highlighting their issues are just beginning to appear.  A few more and I’ll start mentioning those.

That’s it for now, but stay tuned because a lot will be happening shortly.